When Floridian Casey Anthony was charged with the murder and manslaughter of her two year old daughter, Caylee, media went into overdrive, condemning Casey guilty before the trial even began. The internet and news outlets were exploding with outrage and indignation, causing me to remark to a friend that it felt like the Lindy Chamberlain slash trial by media all over again. The only difference this time was that Casey’s jury, unlike Lindy’s, were obviously not influenced and pressured by media attention to find her guilty, no matter what.
When that jury acquitted Casey, hot emotion went beyond boiling point. And suddenly everyone was a legal expert on the criminal justice system, behaving as if they had been in that courtroom, listening to the defence, prosecution and all the evidence presented, how and why the law was wrong and is an ass, and how they can “fix” the legal and jury systems. They forgot that they were getting second-hand information as distilled by media sources. Predictably, social media went into overdrive. Facebook members sent out invites to people to put their porch lights on for Caylee (I received two invitations and declined both, obviously. Also, I don’t have a porch). Nancy Grace, a former prosecutor of dubious prosecutorial conduct and host of a current affairs show, laid it on thick, stating that “the devil is dancing tonight”.
It has gone so far as people calling for the revocation of the Fifth Amendment which protects people from double jeopardy, and signing a petition at Change.org that is calling to make it a felony for a parent or guardian to not notify law enforcement of a child going missing within 24 hours.
As Radley Balko points out, this would be bad law for several reasons, least of which it would be based on emotion rather than reason and it would be bad policy. There would be “no way for a medical examiner to determine time of death in the sort of narrow window that would be necessary to enforce Caylee’s Law”.
Balko elaborates with a number of questions:
If medical science can’t pinpoint the time of the child’s death to the minute, how else are authorities going to determine it? They can’t ask the parent. A guilty person isn’t going to give you an honest answer, and even an innocent parent may lie if they fear the truth could land them in prison. It also seems safe to assume that a parent’s first instinct upon witnessing the death of a child isn’t to look up at the clock to take note of an official time of death . . . .
There are myriad other problems with the one-hour requirement. What if a child dies while sleeping? When would you start the clock on the parent’s one-hour window to report? From the time the parent discovers the child is dead, or from the time the child actually dies? . . . . What if a parent or babysitter missed the deadline because she fell asleep at the time the child was playing outside and suffered a fatal accident? . . . .
The portion of the bill that requires a parent to report a missing child within 24 hours is just as fraught with problems. When does that clock start? From the time the child actually gets abducted, gets lost, or is somehow killed, or at the time the parents noticed the child was missing? How do you pinpoint the time that they “noticed”?
Clearly, the Caylee Anthony case was stoked to inflame the emotions of people — and I want to make it clear here that it is tragic and sad what happened to Caylee. No doubt.
But what has been bugging me the most is this: where is the equivalent outrage and emotion over this?
Sudan
Or this?
Or this?
Los Angeles, USA
I’m also not seeing the equivalent public grief over Leiby Kletzky, the 8 year old boy who was kidnapped, drugged and suffocated last week in New York City.
The inflaming effect of media coverage on the Casey Anthony trial and acquittal, and the public grief and outrage for Caylee Anthony compared to the examples above, makes me wonder, wonder about people’s sense of reality, selectiveness, perspective and genuineness at times.
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